Hours after Cuomo’s proposal Wednesday to enact “the toughest assault weapon ban in the nation, period!” and sweeping gun control legislation, NRA President David Keene gave an exclusive interview to the Brooklyn GOP Radio podcast.

Pointing to the lists of gun owners published by two New York-based news outlets, the Journal News and Gawker, Keene singled out the cultural dimensions of the debate.

“The whole battle over the Second Amendment has little to do with crime or any of these things,” Keene said. “It has to do with culture and the view that different people have about what kind of a country this ought to be.”

Liberal media elites have chosen sides in that battle, he said.

“It wasn’t until the culture wars of the late 1960′s, 70′s and 80′s that, all of a sudden, the Second Amendment became anathema to liberals who viewed it, really I think culturally, as symbolic of an America they didn’t like, an America in which people took responsibility for themselves and for the protection of their families, an America which didn’t look to the state for the answer to all of its problems. And the media, the elite media, if anything, represents that view more than almost any segment of our society,” he said.

As the archetypal blue state, the media capital of the world and a liberal stronghold, New York embodies those sentiments to many Americans.

The NRA, it seems, would like its members to remember exactly that – and to consider the gun control debate as another front in the culture wars, with the Empire State serving as headquarters of the opposition.